The Place That is Free of Suffering

 The purpose of the world is for us to be lost in it as a step to finding our way out.  As Ram Dass says, this world is our curriculum to learn to transcend this world.  I'm not sure how that happens.  I do think it's natural, that is, it's our way as human beings -- we begin this human incarnation in a physical body and world that we are captured in and become lost in.  Eventually, after enough of the kind of experiences that wake us up and shake up our perception, we become aware that this world is the manifestation of something more and deeper, something that is not a physical thing, some spirit or force behind the scene, referred to by many names such as Infinite Spirit or Soul or Source or God.  We then begin to be in the world but not of it.  We develop a binocular vision and living, with one eye and one foot in this world and one eye and one foot in the spiritual.  We begin to find our way out and transcend the physical body and world with which we began.  I think it's a long slow and often difficult process and road along which we each do some traveling.  As for suffering, I don't remember a time when I thought that suffering was not necessary -- maybe when I was very young and naive.  To me, suffering is part of being human.  I suffer my experience, which includes my pain.  I've come to realize I can suffer unnecessarily, that is, in a way that creates unnecessary pain.  My hope is to grow in suffering necessarily,  efficiently and gracefully.

 When I was a little child (hypersensitive that I am), I witnessed suffering and injustices all around me.  Within my own home, I was amazed at how people (in their own suffering) inflicted suffering on the bigger group.  (When you love someone, you don't "shoot them with arrows",)  Finger pointing, "shame" and other "reducing tactics" by a sufferer certainly can't make a sufferer feel any better . . . I would think (if they were at all "other" centered) it would make them suffer even more. 
In time, I learned (like you said, David) God put me in the family He did to lift me higher . . . That I might see as He sees.  I completely agree with your words David!  Very true!